A costume designer's creative approach to making Depp dapper

Johnny Deppclearly has a fondness for Colleen Atwood. The two-time Oscar-winning costume designer has created eight wardrobes for Depp, dating back to "Edward Scissorhands." She dressed Depp as John Dillingerin last summer's "Public Enemies," costumed the dapper actor to portray Hunter S. Thompsonin the 2010 release "The Rum Diary" and designed his Mad Hatter costume in the forthcoming "Alice in Wonderland" adaptation. She is now creating outfits for him and Angelina Joliein the contemporary thriller "The Tourist."

Atwood says, "The thing that's so compelling about Johnny Depp is that he is a character actor in a movie star's body," Atwood says. "He can take the things that make somebody approachable in a character and do it with such grace and elegance that he makes it appealing for everyone."

Atwood's costumes for "Public Enemies" will be showcased at the Fashion Institute of Design & Marketing's "Art of Motion Picture Costume Design" show in Los Angeles beginning Feb. 9. The nine-week exhibition includes costumes from "Nine," her third Rob Marshallfilm, following their Academy Award-winning collaborations on "Chicago" and "Memoirs of a Geisha."

To develop concepts for the Mad Hatter, Atwood studied English working conditions in the 1860s, when Lewis Carroll's original "Alice in Wonderland" was published. "We based Johnny's look after researching the period and learning that hatters made a decent living but were exposed to heinous chemicals like mercury, which fries your hair and your brain - hence the name Mad Hatter," she says. "From that we incorporated hatpins into the hat band and put thimbles in his pockets so that the costume shows things that a hatter would actually use for his trade."

For Atwood, leapfrogging across time periods and locations helps keep the gig fresh. "Whether it's 'Public Enemies' or 'Nine' or 'Alice in Wonderland,' you take a world and you plug into it," she says. "You create the clothing environment that marries into the world that the director and set designer have created. That's what designing for a movie is all about."

Screenwriter adapts 'The Seven Sins'

Screenwriter Christopher Kylesigned on this month to adapt Jon Land's best-selling novel "The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending." Kyle, who previously penned Kathryn Bigelow's "K-19: The Widowmaker" and Oliver Stone's "Alexander," says, "The thing that distinguishes 'The Tyrant' from other thrillers is the dark complexity of its hero. Michael Tiranno can be brutal, but even at his most ruthless, he is always charismatic. The novel never tries to sugarcoat these contradictions." Las Vegas entrepreneur Fabrizio Boccardi is producing the picture with "Terminator" movie chief Moritz Bormanand aims to finish it in 2012.

LGBT films seize a marketing opportunity

As art house theaters struggle to survive, film festivals have become an increasingly important theatrical release platform for specialized movies, according to Maria Lynn. She's CEO of Wolfe Video, which for 25 years has specialized in LGBT product. "Sundance is more of an industry festival," Lynn says, "But local festivals are more for town folk. Since it's tough to get people into theaters for small films, we've been putting films on the gay and lesbian festival circuit, which is enormous. It's not unusual for one of our films to play 50 or 60 cities in the U.S. just in the festival market."

Despite the economy, LGBT film business is "edging on bullish," Lynn observes. "When I started at Wolfe 16 years ago, I thought, 'What if everybody starts coming out? Will anybody still care about this genre?' And what happened is, our work in mainstreaming these films has just opened up more opportunities."

In March, Wolfe releases "Pornography (A Thriller)." Acquired at Los Angeles' OutFest, the movie centers on a porn star who's being stalked. Last year, the company's biggest hit was "Were the World Mine," a gay high school musical now available on www.wolfevideo.com. Lynn says, "Our most popular movies are romantic comedies and thrillers, just like in the mainstream." {sbox}